u/EEZAK04

Spoilers for Diamond is Unbreakable and Fullmetal Alchemist.

The best version of this is when the characters sacrifice something massive, achieve something tiny in return that the villain would deem insignificant, which then leads to the villains defeat later on, making the previous sacrifice worth it.

DIAMOND IS UNBREAKABLE: Shigechi is killed by Kira, but he manages to rip off one of Kira’s jacket buttons which the protagonists later use to discover Kira’s identity

FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST: Ling’s bodyguards sacrifice themselves so that he can land a single blow on Wrath, scratching his eye out. During Wrath’s final fight with Scar his remaining eye is blinded by the sun, allowing Scar to kill him.

Films or shows with seemingly happy endings that take on completely different meanings if you pay attention to stuff going in the background in the final scene.

THE SOPRANOS: The series ends seemingly at random in the middle of a scene where Tony is eating food in a diner. If you pay attention you’ll notice a person going into the bathroom earlier in the scene, with the implication being they were retrieving a gun and the “cut to black” is Tony being shot and killed (foreshadowed by multiple scenes earlier in the series)

IT FOLLOWS: The film ends with the characters seemingly killing the entity… until you notice someone slowly walking towards them in the background in one of the final shots, implying the entity is still alive

Spoilers for Attack on Titan and One Piece:

Attack on Titan (Loved): The end credits for season 2 show the entire backstory of the series, years before it would be revealed in the manga. It also shows glimpses of end-of-series events which the manga hadn’t reached yet. Loved because most viewers (including the manga readers) would have had zero clue how important the events depicted were, as it mostly just looks like titans eating people combined with some weird creepy drawings.

One Piece (Hated): During the Wano arc, the intro shows eight of the nine red scabbards, along with one other character who was believed to be a villain at this point, spoiling people that this character was secretly the ninth scabbard long before the manga revealed it